For curing dental filling materials used for the purpose of restoration for natural teeth but also for separately fabricated sets of teeth, radiation with a high UV portion is employed.
Plastics are popular filling materials that can be cured with electromagnetic radiation in material-dependent wavelength ranges (light). A precondition for an optimum polymerization of the plastic material is the introduction of a necessary amount of light, resulting from the light power times the exposure time.
When using light the operator precisely has to position the light source above the filling material. If the light is aimed next to the filling material, not enough light is fed to the filling material. This results in not providing the required amount of light in order to cure the filling material.
Conventional systems have orange filter glasses in order to support the positioning of the light source, which orange filter glasses subdue the light in such a manner that the spot is visible, for example in the mouth area, on which the light falls. The orange filter glasses, however, are tediously to handle and make the application of the light source complicated. Moreover, there are situations in which a determination of the correct positioning of the light source is not possible at all.
Modern dental treatment instruments that remove material from the tooth by means of a high-energy laser beam are capable of carrying out a position determination based on the plasma radiation resulting from the removal of material. In this conjunction, the intensity of the plasma radiation contains all information about the distance between tooth and dental treatment instrument. Based on this information, the dental treatment instrument can be switched off automatically if it is positioned too far away from the tooth.
When curing filling materials, however, there is no radiation by means of which it would possible to determine the radiation source.